In the 12th century dialectic and mysticism are seen contending for the mastery in the department of theology. On the one side stands Abælard, in whom the sceptical dialectic had its most eminent representative. Over against him stands St. Bernard as his most resolute opponent. Theological dialectic afterwards assumed a pre-eminently dogmatic and ecclesiastical character, entering into close relationship with mysticism. While this movement was mainly carried on in France, where the University of Paris attracted teachers and scholars from all lands, it passed over from thence into Germany, where Provost Gerhoch and his brother Arno gave it their active support in opposition to that destructive sort of dialectic that was then spreading around them. Although the combination of dogmatic dialectic and mysticism had for a long time no formal recognition, it ultimately secured the approval of the highest ecclesiastical authorities.

§ 102.1. The Contest on French Soil.

  1. The Dialectic Side of the Gulf.—Peter Abælard, superior to all his contemporaries in acuteness, learning, dialectic power, and bold freethinking, but proud and disputatious, was born at Palais in Brittany in A.D. 1079. His first teacher in philosophy was Roscelin. Afterwards he entered the school of William of Champeaux at Paris, the most celebrated dialectician of his times. Having defeated his master in a public disputation, he founded a school at Melun near Paris, where thousands of pupils flocked to him. In order to be nearer Paris, he moved his school to Corbeil; then to the very walls of Paris on Mount St. Genoveva; and ceased not to overwhelm William with humiliations, until his old teacher retreated from the field. In order to secure still more brilliant success, he began to study theology under the Schoolman Anselm of Laon. But very soon the ambitious scholar thought himself superior also to this master. Relying upon his dialectical endowments, he took a bet without further preparation to expound the difficult prophet Ezekiel. He did it indeed to the satisfaction of scholars, but Anselm refused to allow him to continue his lectures. Abælard now returned to Paris, where he gathered around him a great number of enthusiastic pupils. Canon Fulbert appointed him teacher of his beautiful and talented niece Heloise. He won her love, and they were secretly married. She then denied the marriage in order that he might not be debarred from the highest offices of the church. Persisting in this denial, her relatives dealt severely with her, and Abælard had her placed in the nunnery of Argenteuil. Fulbert in his fury had Abælard seized during the night and emasculated, so that he might be disqualified for ecclesiastical preferment. Overwhelmed with shame, he fled to the monastery of St. Denys, and there in A.D. 1119 took the monastic vow. Heloise took the veil at Argenteuil. But even at St. Denys Abælard was obliged by the eager entreaties of former scholars to resume his lectures. His free and easy treatment of the church doctrine and his haughty spirit aroused many enemies against him, who at the Synod of Soissons in A.D. 1121 compelled him before the papal legate to cast into the fire his treatise De Unitate et Trinitate divina, and had him committed to a monastic prison. By the intercession of some friends he was soon again set free, and returned to St. Denys. But when he made the discovery that Dionysius at Paris was not the Areopagite the persecution of the monks drove him into a forest near Troyes. There too his scholars followed him and made him resume his lectures. His colony grew up under his hands into the famous abbey of the Paraclete. Finding even there no rest, he made over the abbey of the Paraclete to Heloise, who had not been able to come to terms with her insubordinate nuns at Argenteuil. He himself now became abbot of the monastery of St. Gildasius at Ruys in Brittany, and, after in vain endeavouring for eight years to restore the monastic discipline, he again in A.D. 1136 resumed his office of teacher and lectured at St. Genoveva near Paris with great success. He wrote an ethical treatise, “Scito te ipsum,” issued a new and enlarged edition of his Theologia christiana, now extant as the incomplete Introductio ad theologiam in three books, and composed a Dialogus inter Philosophum, Judæum et Christianum, in which the heathen philosophers and poets of antiquity are ranked almost as high as the prophets and apostles. In Sic et Non, “Yes and No,” a collection of extracts from the Fathers under the various heads of doctrine contradictory of one another, the traditional theology was held up to contempt.

§ 102.2.

Abælard maintained, in opposition to the Augustinian-Anselmian theory, that faith preceded knowledge, that only what we comprehend is to be believed. He did indeed intend that his dialectic should be used not for the overthrow but for the establishment of the church doctrine. He proceeded, however, from doubt as the principle of all knowledge, regarding all church dogmas as problems which must be proved before they can be believed: Dubitando enim ad inquisitionem venimus, inquirendo veritatem percipimus. He thus reduced faith to a mere probability and measured the content of faith by the rule of subjective reason. This was most glaring in the case of the trinitarian doctrine, which with him approached Sabellian modalism. God as omnipotent is to be called Father, as all wise the Son, as loving and gracious the Spirit; and so the incarnation becomes a merely temporal and dynamic immanence of the Logos in the man Jesus. The significance of the ethical element in Christianity quite overshadowed that of the dogmatic. He taught that all fundamental truths of Christianity had been previously proclaimed by philosophers and poets of Greece and Rome, who were scarcely less inspired than the prophets and apostles, the special service of the latter consisting in giving currency to these truths among the uncultured. He turns with satisfaction from the theology of the Fathers to that of the apostles, and from that again to the religion of Jesus, whom he represents rather as a reformer introducing a pure morality than as a founder of a religious system.Setting aside Anselm’s theory of satisfaction, he regards the redemption and reconciliation of man as consisting in the awakening in sinful man, by means of the infinite love displayed by Christ’s teaching and example, by His life, sufferings and death upon the cross, a responding love of such fulness and power, that he is thereby freed from the dominion of sin and brought into the glorious liberty of the children of God.[298]—Abælard’s fame and following grew in a wonderful manner from day to day; but also powerful opponents dragged his heresies into light and vigorously combated them. The most important of these were the Cistercian monk William of Thierry and St. Bernard, who called attention to the dangerous tendency of his teaching. St. Bernard dealt personally with the heretic, but when he failed in converting him, he appeared in A.D. 1141 at the Synod of Sens as his accuser. The synod condemned as heretical a series of statements culled from his writings by Bernard. Abælard appealed to the pope, but even his friends at Rome, among whom was Card. Guido de Castella, afterwards Pope Cœlestine II., could not close their eyes to his manifest heterodoxies. His friendship for Arnold of Brescia also told against him at Rome (§ [108, 7]). Innocent II. therefore excommunicated Abælard and his supporters, condemned his writings to be burnt and himself to be confined in a monastery.Abælard found an asylum with the abbot Peter the Venerable of Clugny, who not only effected his reconciliation with Bernard, but also, on the ground of his Apologia s. Confessio fidei, in which he submitted to the judgment of the church, obtained permission from the pope to pass his last days in peace at Clugny. During this time he composed his Hist. calamitatum Abælardi, an epistolary autobiography, which, though not free from vanity and bitterness, is yet worthy to be ranked with Augustine’s “Confessions” for its unreserved self-accusation and for the depth of self-knowledge which it reveals. He died in A.D. 1142, in the monastery of St. Marcellus at Chalons, where he had gone in quest of health. He was buried in the abbey of the Paraclete, where Heloise laid on his coffin the letter of absolution of Peter of Clugny.Twenty-two years later Heloise herself was laid in the same quiet resting place.[299]

§ 102.3.

  1. The Mystic Side of the Gulf.—Abælard’s most famous opponent was St. Bernard of Clairvaux (§ [98, 1]), born in A.D. 1091 at Fontaines near Dijon in Burgundy, died in A.D. 1153, a man of such extraordinary influence on his generation as the world seldom sees. Venerated as a miracle worker, gifted with an eloquence that carried everything before it (doctor mellifluus), he was the protector and reprover of the Vicar of God, the peacemaker among the princes, the avenger of every wrong. His genuine humility made him refuse all high places. His enthusiasm for the hierarchy did not hinder him from severely lashing clerical abuses. It was his word that roused the hearts of men throughout all Europe to undertake the second crusade, and that won many heretics and schismatics back to the bosom of the church. Having his conversation in heaven, leading a life of study, meditation, prayer, and ecstatic contemplation, he had also dominion over the earth, and by counsel, exhortation, and exercise of discipline exerted a quickening and healthful influence on all the relations of life. His theological tendency was in the direction of contemplative mysticism, with hearty submission to the doctrine of the church. Like Abælard, but from the opposite side, he came into conflict with the theory of Anselm; for the ideal of theology with him was not the development of faith into knowledge by means of thought, but rather the enlightenment of faith in the way of holiness. Bernard was not at all an enemy of science, but he rather saw in the dialectical hair-splitting of Abælard, which grudged not to cut down the main props of saving truth for the glorification of its own art, the overthrow of all true theology and the destruction of all the saving efficacy of faith. Heart theology founded on heart piety, nourished and strengthened by prayer, meditation, spiritual illumination and holiness, was for him the only true theology. Tantum Deus cognoscitur, quantum diligitur. Orando facilius quam disputando et dignius Deus quæritur et invenitur. The Bible was his favourite reading, and in the recesses of the forest he spent much time in prayer and study of the Scriptures. But in ecstasy (excessus) which consists in withdrawal from sensible phenomena and becoming temporarily dead to all earthly relations, the soul of the pious Christian is able to rise into the immediate presence of God, so that “more angelorum” it reaches a blessed vision and enjoyment of the Divine glory and that perfect love which loves itself and all creatures only in God. Yet even he confesses that this highest stage of abstraction was only attained unto by him occasionally and partially through God’s special grace. Bernard’s mysticism is most fully set forth in his eighty-six Sermons on the first two chapters of the Song of Solomon and in the tract De diligendo Deo. In his controversy with Abælard he wrote his Tractatus de erroribus Petri Abælardi. To the department of dogmatics belongs De gratia et libero arbitrio; and to that of history, the biography of his friend Malachias (§ [149, 5]). The most important of his works is De Consideratione, in 5 bks., in which with the affection of a friend, the earnestness of a teacher, and the authority of a prophet, he sets before Pope Eugenius III. the duties and dangers of his high position. He was also one of the most brilliant hymn writers of the Middle Ages. Alexander III. canonized him in A.D. 1173, and Pius VIII. in A.D. 1830 enrolled him among the doctores ecclesiæ (§ [47, 22 c]).—Soon after the controversy with Abælard had been brought to a close by the condemnation of the church, Bernard was again called upon to resist the pretensions of dialectic. Gilbert de la Porrée (Porretanus), teacher of theology at Paris, who became Bishop of Poitiers in A.D. 1142 and died in A.D. 1154, in his commentary on the theological writings of Boëthius (§ [47, 23]) ascribed reality to the universal term “God” in such a way that instead of a Trinity we seemed to have a Quaternity.At the Synod of Rheims, A.D. 1148, under the presidency of Pope Eugenius III., Bernard appeared as accuser of Porretanus. Gilbert’s doctrine was condemned, but he himself was left unmolested.[300]

§ 102.4.

  1. Bridging the Gulf from the Side of Mysticism.—At the school of the monastery of St. Victor in Paris, founded by William of Champeaux after his defeat at the hands of Abælard, an attempt was made during the first half of the 12th century to combine mysticism and dialectic in the treatment of theology. The peaceable heads of this school would indeed have nothing to do with the speculations of Abælard and his followers which tended to overthrow the mysteries of the faith. But the mystics of St. Victor made an important concession to the dialecticians by entering with as much energy upon the scientific study and construction of dogmatics as they did upon the devout examination of Scripture and mystical theology. They exhibited a speculative power and a profundity of thought that won the hearty admiration of the subtlest of the dialecticians. By far the most celebrated of this school was Hugo of St. Victor. Descended from the family of the Count of Halberstadt, born in A.D. 1097, nearly related to St. Bernard, honoured by his contemporaries as Alter Augustinus or Lingua Augustini, Hugo was one of the most profound thinkers of the Middle Ages. Having enjoyed a remarkably complete course of training, he was enthusiastically devoted to the pursuit of science, and, endowed with rich and deep spirituality, he exerted a most healthful and powerful influence upon his own and succeeding ages, although church and science had to mourn their loss by his early death in A.D. 1141.In his Eruditio didascalica we have in 3 bks. an encyclopædic sketch of all human knowledge as a preparation to the study of theology, and in other 3 bks. an introduction to the Bible and church history.[301] His Summa sententiarum is an exposition of dogmatics on patristic lines, an ecclesiastical counterpart of Abælard’s Sic et Non. The ripest and most influential of all his works, and the most independent, is his De sacramentis christ. fidei, in 2 bks., in which he treats of the whole contents of dogmatics from the point of view of the Sacraments (§ [104, 2]). His exegetical works are less important and less original. His mysticism is set forth ex professo in his Soliloquium de arrha animæ and in the series of three tracts, De arca morali, De arca mystica, and De vanitate mundi. He makes Noah’s ark the symbol of the church as well as of the individual soul which journeys over the billows of the world to God, and, by the successive stages of lectio, cogitatio, meditatio, oratio, and operatio reaches to contemplatio or the vision of God.—Hugo’s pupil, and from A.D. 1162 the prior of his convent, was the Scotchman Richard St. Victor, who died in A.D. 1173. With less of the dialectic faculty than his master—though this too is shown in his 6 bks. De trinitate, a scholastic exposition of the Cognitio or Fides quæ creditur—he mainly devoted his energies to the development on the mystico-contemplative side of the “Affectus” or Fides qua creditur, which aims at the vision and enjoyment of God. This he represents as reached by the three stages of contemplation, distinguished as mentis dilatatio, sublevatio, and alienatio. Among his mystical tracts, mostly mystical expositions of Scripture passages, the most important are, De præparatione animæ ad contemplationem, s. de xii. patriarchis, and the 4 bks. De gratia contemplationis s. de arca mystica. These are also known as Benjamin minor and B. major. In Richard there appears the first indications of a misunderstanding with the dialecticians which, among the late Victorines, and especially in the case of Walter of St. Victor, took the form of vehement hostility.

§ 102.5.